“Don’t tell me you have to go back in,” Mary Catherine said, still camped out in the chair opposite mine.
“This city never sleeps and apparently neither does its latest psychopath.” I heaved myself to my feet and rooted around the darkened room until I lucked onto my keys, then opened the lockbox in the closet to get my Glock.
“Are you going to be all right?” I asked her. It was a pretty stupid question. What was I going to do if she said no?
“We’re fine,” she said. “You be careful.”
“Believe me, if I get near this guy, I won’t give him a chance to hurt me.”
“Driving, too,” Mary Catherine said. “I’m concerned. You look like you just crawled out of a crypt.”
“Gee, thanks for the compliment,” I said. “If it’s any consolation, I feel even worse.”
I proved it immediately by walking smack into my front door, before I remembered I had to open it first.
But in the elevator down, I started looking on the bright side. At least this time, the guy had the decency to murder somebody on the West Side, so I didn’t have far to drive.
Chapter 52
THE CRIME SCENE TECHS were still stringing yellow ribbon when I arrived at the murder site on 38th Street.
“Nice work,” I said to one of them. “Tape’s looking sharp. How’d you score a new roll?” A little hamming it up for the waiting cops and techs is pretty much expected from the arriving homicide detective, and, as loopy as I felt, I was more than happy to oblige.
“You gotta know the right people,” a burly guy with a mustache growled back. “This way, Detective.” He lifted the waist-high plastic ribbon to make it easier for me to limbo underneath.
“I mean, this is what I call a crime scene,” I said. “Garbage in the street? Check. Lifeless citizen? Check?—”
“Wiseass detective? Check,” Cathy Calvin called from behind the barricade.
“Backstabbing reporters, present and accounted for,” I continued, without looking at her.
An Amtrak on its way to anywhere but Hell’s Kitchen gave a tap of its horn as it rumbled beneath the sidewalk train bridge we were standing on. I had a sudden impulse to vault off the bridge onto its top. I’d always dreamt of riding the rails.
“Even moody, cine noir sound effects,” I said, giving the techs a satisfied nod. “You know how much money a Hollywood studio would have to spend for this kind of authenticity? You guys have really outdone yourselves. I honestly couldn’t have asked for better.”
On the way over, I’d learned from Beth Peters that the victim was a heavy in the fashion industry. I’d started to wonder if this situation had parallels to the Gianni Versace murder—if the Teacher was some twerp on the outskirts of the rich and famous, who’d decided to reach out and grab his fifteen minutes of fame the hard way.
The hard way for other people.
I squatted down and looked at the corpse. Then I jumped up and stumbled backward, suddenly and totally wide awake.
“4U Mike, YFA!” was written across the victim’s forehead in Magic Marker.
As I looked up and down the shadowed street, I realized that my hands were trembling. They wanted to draw my Glock and kill that son of a bitch. I clenched them into fists in order to still them. My gaze turned back to the young man lying on the sidewalk. I cringed at the sight of his blood-drenched crotch.
I cursed myself for provoking the Teacher, but then I stopped beating myself up. He would have killed again anyway. He was just using a cheap, ugly pretext to cast blame on me.
I’d wait until I came face-to-face with him. Then I’d turn loose my rage.
Chapter 53
WHEN I GOT BACK TO MY BUILDING, even my doorman Ralph knew better than to mess with me. It must have been the stark expression on my face.
Upstairs, I made sure all the locks on the doors and windows were secured before I found my bedroom.
It was going to require smelling salts to wake me come morning, but I did not care. I was not going to brush my teeth. I barely had the energy to take off my shoes. I was going to fall into my bed and sleep until someone wrenched me out of it with great physical force.
I had just pulled my beloved body pillow to my chest when I heard the giggling. It was coming from the other side of the bed.
No, I prayed. Please, Lord. No.
The pillow was tugged out of my grip. A wide-awake Shawna lay there staring at me with a beaming smile.
“Sweetie, this isn’t your bed,” I pleaded softly. “This isn’t even the bathtub. Do you want a pony, Shawna? Daddy will get you a whole herd of ponies if you let him have some rest.”
She shook her head, immediately getting into the spirit of this new game. I felt like weeping. I was doomed, and I knew it. The problem with the youngest kids in a big family is that by the time you’ve gotten to them, you realize it’s actually easier to do things for them than to sit around and agonizingly wait for them to do things for themselves. They instinctively know this. They sense the emptiness in threats the way an ATF dog can detect explosives. Resistance is futile. You are theirs.
As this was going through my mind, I heard more giggling, then felt the movement of something small climbing into the bottom of my bed. I didn’t even have to look to know that Chrissy was getting into the act. She and Shawna were as thick as thieves.
Next, tiny hands separated the largest and second largest toes of my right foot.
“Toe pit sensitivity training,” my daughters screamed in glee as they wriggled their fingers between my toes.
I couldn’t take any more, and I sat up to tell them they had to go back to their own beds. But I stopped when I saw the undiluted delight radiating off them. What the heck. At least they weren’t puking.
Besides, how could you argue with a light beam and an angel?
“All right, I’ll show you some sensitivity training,” I mock-threatened.
Their happy shrieks threatened to shatter the light fixture as I tried the Vulcan nerve pinch on both of them simultaneously.
A few minutes later, after an elaborate ritual of arranging stuffed animals and squish pillows, I managed to tuck in my daughters next to me.
“Tell us a story, Daddy,” Chrissy said as I collapsed again.
“Okay, honey,” I said with my eyes closed. “Once upon a time, there was a poor old detective who lived in a shoe.”
Chapter 54
“BENNETT? YOU THERE?!”
I lunged up from the mattress, hand groping for my service weapon, as a shrill voice drilled a hole in my right eardrum. Then I realized with bewilderment that I was in my own bedroom filled with morning sunlight, not some murky, death-harboring alley of nightmare. My cell phone, folded open, was resting on my pillow beside where my head had been. One of my kids must have answered it and helpfully stuck it next to sleeping daddy’s ear.
“Yeah?” I said, lifting it with an unsteady hand.
“Nine o’clock meeting at the Plaza, and I don’t mean the Oak Room,” Chief of Detectives McGinnis snapped, and hung up as sharply as he’d spoken.
Not only did I make it into my unmarked Chevy in ten minutes flat, I was even showered and dressed. I got the car rolling and dug for the Norelco I kept in the glove compartment, feeling like I’d died and gone to heaven. I must have gotten close to five hours of real, delicious sleep.
I strode through the doors of One Police Plaza with a full forty seconds to spare, and took the elevator up to twelve, to the same cramped conference room where the first task force meeting had been held. The same tired and wired-looking cops were sitting there. I poured myself a coffee, grabbed a chocolate glazed, and took my place among them.
Right on time, McGinnis came barreling in, holding a copy of the Post above his head. “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?” the headline read, below the surveillance video shot of the Teacher.
“The answer is yes,” he announced, tossing the paper across the conference table. “We had an Air France flight attendant pick out our
shooter an hour ago.”
Spontaneous applause ripped through the room. Thank you, God, I thought, punching fists with Beth Peters beside me. I was so juiced, I decided to let slide the way that McGinnis had said we, with no mention of exactly who we were.
Our lead had paid off! Now we actually had a real shot at this animal.
“Suspect’s name is Thomas Gladstone,” McGinnis said, handing out printouts from a large sheaf. “He’s a former British Airways pilot—lives in Locust Valley, out on the island.”
Locust Valley? I thought. Wasn’t that the place where everyone’s name sounded like Thurston J. Howell III? Pilots made decent money, but they weren’t anywhere near that level on the food chain. I wondered if that explained some of the upscale targets. Maybe Gladstone had gotten snubbed at Polo and 21, or something along those lines, and decided that undertipping just wasn’t going to cut it in terms of showing his dissatisfaction.
“We’ve got a triggering incident, too,” McGinnis said. “Turns out Gladstone was scheduled to fly out of Heathrow to New York last week, but they caught him drunk and he got the ax. And we just found his car, littered with parking tickets in the Locust Valley commuter lot.”
I nodded grimly. Now we were getting somewhere. Losing a job was high up there on the list of why people went on rampages.
“We have an arrest warrant yet?” I said.
“We will by the time we bag this skell’s sorry ass,” McGinnis said. “ESU’s waiting downstairs. Who’s up for a little trip to the Gold Coast?”
I shot up out of my chair with the rest of the surrounding cops, grinning. I’d never even touched my coffee, but for some reason I felt completely refreshed.
Chapter 55
LOCUST VALLEY’S TOWN SQUARE seemed to consist solely of slate-roofed antiques shops, boutiques, and salons. Our designated staging area was a parking lot on Forest Avenue behind something called a “coach and motor works.” Call me a philistine, but it looked suspiciously like a gas station to me.
Nassau County Bureau of Special Operations and even some Suffolk County Emergency Service police were already there waiting for us. When a cop killer is involved, interdepartmental cooperation is more than a given.
“Morning, guys,” I said, and gathered everybody over by my car for a briefing.
The Nassau crew already had surveillance set up around Gladstone’s four-acre property. There were no signs of activity there, and no one had gone in or out. Calls to the inside of his house were picked up by the answering machine. Gladstone had a wife named Erica and two co-ed daughters, I learned, but they hadn’t yet been located.
Tom Riley, the Nassau Special Ops lieutenant, tossed digital photos of the front and back of Gladstone’s house onto the hood of my Chevy. The place was a gorgeous sprawling Tudor with a covered patio and a swimming pool in back. The landscaping was immaculate—Japanese maples, chrysanthemums, ornamental grasses. Definitely not the kind of house one usually associated with homicidal maniacs.
Studying the layout, we talked strategy about how to enter. There would be no attempt to negotiate. We’d gotten the arrest warrant, and we were going in. But considering the firepower Gladstone had, plus the fact that he’d already iced one cop and put another into a coma, no precaution was overlooked.
We decided that a breach team would storm the front door while snipers covered the narrow facing windows. If Gladstone showed his face in one, he’d be going down.
Since this was my case, I claimed the honor of following right behind the breach team to search the second floor.
“That door looks pretty solid,” I said. “What are you going to use? A battering ram?”
A young, muscular NYPD ESU sergeant held up a sawed-off shotgun and racked its slide.
“Brought my skeleton key,” he said, smiling around a chaw of tobacco. He actually seemed to be enjoying himself. I was glad he was on my side.
As the team geared up to start moving, I reached into my jacket and dropped another photograph onto the hood of the car. It was a picture of Tonya Griffith, the young woman transit cop Gladstone had murdered.
“Just a little reminder of why we all got out of bed this morning, gentlemen,” I said. “Let’s ring this scumbag’s bell.”
Gladstone’s house was three blocks away, on a wooded street called Lattingtown Ridge Court. Our vehicles pulled out of the parking lot and cruised there, lights and sirens off.
As we arrived, I gave the green light over the radio. Two Emergency Service diesel trucks suddenly swerved into the driveway and across the lawn. A half-dozen tactical cops spilled out from behind them. Within seconds, I heard two crisp explosions—the front door hinges being shotgunned off.
As the cops shouldered the door aside and piled through it, yelling and tossing flashbangs, I flung open my car door and rushed in with them. I took the stairs two by two, with my Glock drawn and my heart pulsing like a strobe light.
“Police!” I screamed, kicking open the first closed door I encountered. It was a bathroom. There was nothing inside. Nobody. Curtain rings jingled as I ripped down the shower curtain. Just a shower caddy filled with shampoo bottles.
Damn! I thought, rushing back out into the hall, swinging my pistol from side to side.
Where was Gladstone?
Chapter 56
THE FRAMED PHOTOGRAPHS of well-dressed, smiling people that lined the hallway rattled as I stormed along it.
“Police!” I yelled again. “We’re all over you, Gladstone. This is the police!”
At the far end was another door, this one slightly ajar. I tightened my grip on the Glock’s trigger and rammed the door with my shoulder.
It opened into a large, tray-ceilinged master bedroom suite. I cleared the corners first, scanned the bed, and . . .
My face jerked away in shock, as if I’d been punched. My gun almost slipped from my fingers before I managed to shove it back into its holster. Then I covered my nose and mouth with a hand as the vile coppery scent of blood and death washed over me.
We were too late.
This guy, I thought.
“Oh, my God,” a woman breathed from the hall behind me. It was Beth Peters, frozen with shock.
This guy.
I stepped out into the hall and got out my radio.
“Up here,” I said weakly. “Second floor.”
“Do you have him?” McGinnis yelled.
“No,” I said. “Not him.”
What we had was a bound, half-naked woman on the bed, drenched in a bloody sheet. Through the open doorway of the bathroom beyond I could see a woman’s foot hanging over the tub rim. Another young woman, a girl really, lay facedown in blood beside the toilet, hog-tied with lamp cord.
Shaking my head, I approached the bodies for a closer inspection. The two women in the bathroom were barely in their twenties. Both of them were completely naked. The woman in the bedroom was older—maybe their mother, Erica Gladstone. My gaze caught a wedding photo lying in a corner, its glass cracked from being knocked to the floor. I picked it up and held it beside her lifeless face. She was so battered, it took me a full minute to confirm it was a match.
I couldn’t believe it. Gladstone had shot and killed his wife and their two daughters. His own flesh and blood.
Other cops were coming into the room now. I could hear their exclamations of horror and disbelief behind me. I stayed where I was, staring at the blood-soaked carpet and sheets.
This was the worst crime of all, an atrocity, an outrage against humanity. God, I wanted to get my hands on this sick prick. Better yet, get him in the sights of my Glock.
Chapter 57
IT WAS ELEVEN THIRTY A.M. when the Teacher stopped in front of an electronics store at 51st and Seventh. All the TVs that he could see through the big plate-glass windows were tuned to the Fox News Channel.
“Spree Killer Update,” scrolled across the top and, “Live from Locust Valley, Long Island” across the bottom.
Hey, I know that place, he thought, smili
ng, as he watched the cops swarming on the lawn in front of the mansion.
Well, how about that? Score one for the gumshoes. They’d actually caught his scent. He’d started to wonder if they ever would.
But it didn’t really matter. He’d have to be a little more careful now, but he’d still be able to get all his work done. They were playing checkers while he was playing grand-master chess.
“Mommy, Mommy! Look, look!” a small Indian kid said as he pressed his face up against the store window in front of an Xbox 360. “Pokémon, Pikachu, Squirtle!” he cried.
His sari-clad mother slapped him on the backside before yanking him away down 51st.
Watching them go, the Teacher remembered the day, long ago, when he’d gone with his mother to get the last of their belongings from the lousy row house he’d grown up in. His dad had stood in the doorway, drinking a bottle of Miller beer and holding back the Teacher’s little brother, who was crying and straining to go with Mommy.
“No, buddy,” his dad kept saying. “You’re Daddy’s boy now, remember? You’re going to stay with me. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay, was it? the Teacher thought.
He shook his head in disbelief, remembering how he’d just sat there in the cab of the moving truck. At first, he’d been embarrassed that the neighbors would see, until he realized they weren’t his neighbors anymore. After that, he’d actually been happy. He’d had to share a room with his stupid little brother, but now he was going to go with his mom, and he’d have his own room. His brother was a baby, he’d decided.
The Teacher’s cheeks bulged as he let out a long breath.
No, it wasn’t okay, he thought, shaking off the memory. But it was getting there. It would all be as okay as it was ever going to be, very soon.
He looked at himself in the plate-glass reflection. He was clean-shaven this morning, wearing a skintight Armani blazer over his tall, tapered frame, with a white silk shirt open at the throat and crotch-biting Dolce and Gabbana jeans—over-the-top, go-f-yourself, moneyed sex and style. Real Tom Ford.